The third page here is from a great film that my wife did whilst she was working for the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) in Alice Springs. She was on a trip with Sonia, who also worked there and three ladies who were from out East of the Plenty Highway (google-map it) towards the Queensland border … I think they went somewhere out past Bonya or something, not sure. But in the video they went lizard hunting. From the car Nadine filmed the ladies when they told them to stop the car, one of them had an iconically large bottom and watching the video I immediately thought of how great it might look as a comic when she bent down to pick up a stick and whacked the side of a tree, and magically this large Perentie lizard just flops off the tree … and fahnee!!!

The Tingari lines I used in this last page here flow onto the next few pages, Craig suggested that I look into them early on. The Geoffrey Bardon book from Papunya Tula is full of Tingari paintings from the Western Desert that I delved into, and have grown very fond of, despite feeling completely lost in their meanings. Back in the second chapter – Saturday – I have a page where I explain what each of the symbols represents and how they are functional elements in storytelling.

Rachel Napaltjarri Jurra is a real Walpiri woman, though I have drawn her differently to real life … but then I’ve done that for all the characters … including Craig (I forgot what he looked like for a while).

I have two major projects on the go with lots of other things slowly coming to boil that I have to check on every now and then.

Sleuth is starting to take shape in sort of the manner that I had anticipated – each of the stories that I had plotted out I strategically left as vague as possible so that when I came to each one I could take it and mould it to the space that I had available on the wall. Of course this is sort of much the same as making a story that fits 28 pages or so and then plotting it out etc. I have already made one story that is far too long and my only solution is to reduce the size of the images so that it fits into something across the wall that works amongst the others. The risk with having some stories that take too long to read is that the viewers won’t want to read too many before they move on … this may be an unrealistic fear, it is difficult to capture people’s attention for too long in galleries … but of course comics may be somewhat different in this respect, I don’t know what other comicers’ experience is with respect to this. Perhaps people do hang around for longer.

I have managed about 6 comics so far. As I have been completing each of the comics I have been sticking them up on the walls of my study so that I get a sense of the way they might be read across the walls. There are already a few different sizes of panels and some without panels at all. I have also decided to have what I call a BANG panel – that is a very large panel at the beginning which sets the scene by way of introduction or by having a huge image to start with then having the following panels much smaller attached to the image, hopefully drawing the viewers into each of the stories. I haven’t got digital versions of these examples yet to give you a sense but perhaps later.

I told you about my intention to write really quick comics and to draw them in such a way that they don’t take too long so as to produce more comics. So far I’ve managed to stick to that concept, I have found it to be a very interesting way to write comics. I have insisted on keeping the process very improvised, even the scripts are somewhat dictated by the images, characters’ body language have changed the script in numerous places (because I wrote the words after having drawn the images, in one example I have drawn the entire comic before I knew what words would accompany it). There’s something extraordinarily satisfying in drawing comics quickly, especially after doing such a long-winded and hand-chiselled comic like the Long Weekend. It feels more organic, more exciting and more in-keeping with the way in which I make music.

Lachie Henderson came to the Blues in the famous trade of Brendan Fevola … I totally rate this guy, he always seems so composed and he seems to be growing and growing … so consistent whether the team is playing poorly or kicking arse. Stepped into the breach last year for Jamo and seemed to make the transition to backman sooooo beautifully, the other week when we lost against Adelaide he was swung back up forward and seemed to make a decent impact in that position with seeming ease … Here’s a pic of him leaving the forwards in his wake!!!

This week we play the mighty Demons … who are not looking quite so mighty, but I suspect that at some point they will rally and surprise us all.

Later in the year I shall start a crowd-funded campaign so I can look at publishing the Long Weekend in book form and making an e-book version with the wonderful assistance of Nadine Kessler. I’ll keep you all posted on this website and on the facebook page also.

Thanks for all the positive feedback so far and enjoy the last chapter as I put it up here.

Here’s a pic of what is now page 7
… this was to plan out the wordier sections of the essay and see what works and what could be chopped by virtue of the fact that the images contain in the important part of the information. Page 7 is still one that I think needs to have some words chopped out … before the final draft I shall take an axe to some of the words there.

This was another page from the very beginning of the process, it is now pages 1 and 2, two of most powerful pages in the comic (my best efforts to date … 100 pages later and I haven’t topped them yet). This page was made well before I had decided on the 9panel format that came later … it was one of the first things that I showed Craig also. He said that he knew it must be good because his wife Jude was interested in reading it … which normally doesn’t happen with his writings.